Letter: The hypocrisy of public lands debate

You can’t have it both ways: stretch the inherent limits of the earth while professing to protect it, too. Moreover, in a society built on fairness, you can’t tell one industry it must keep fossil fuels in the ground and then turn around and use the fuel above ground to drive another industry. That is known as unrepentant hypocrisy.

Why, if so sustainable, has no one within the mighty tourism caucus revealed the amount of carbon being unleashed into the atmosphere by millions of restless, industrialized sightseers compelled to roam and consume? Perhaps because it would disrupt the age old proclivity to annex every square inch of the planet for either profit or possession, in which case the bromide of eco-friendly sustainability is mere doublespeak for protecting the hidden, crinkled purse.

In light of this, I find it alarming to hear wilderness is now on the brink of becoming part and parcel to the pecuniary paradigm of growth. Isn’t it time to re-examine the sustainable eco-tourism oxymoron, in order that we don’t hasten relegating what remains of these ecologically intact, wide open spaces to a housebroken mockery of the wild?